Team Leader, Let’s Retrieve the Transmigrators First! - Chapter 1.1
It was deep in the night, when even the sounds of beasts had died away.
A waning crescent and a full moon hung together in a sky as dark as if black paint had been spilled across it, and not even the stars were visible behind the clouds.
Beneath that night sky, the black forest, ordinarily nothing but quiet, was unusually noisy tonight.
“Haa, haa. Fuck, finally!”
The face of the man running with his back to the castle perched atop a cliff as though it pierced the heavens was filled with joy. But that joy was soon stained with despair when the thunderous sound of hoofbeats shaking the earth drew near.
The man, who hadn’t expected them to notice his absence so quickly, jumped in fright and practically threw himself into a thicket to hide.
“He couldn’t have gotten far, so search every inch of this area! His Grace the Grand Duke commands it!”
“Yes!”
The man shuddered at the shout directed at the group pursuing him. Then he pressed himself even flatter against the ground and held his breath, waiting for the band of knights to pass the thicket where he was hiding. His face twisted with intense self-loathing.
“No, this isn’t what I wanted…!”
The man had realized that he had transmigrated into a character from a novel he’d started reading long ago and then abandoned.
And into the frail second son of some count’s family, at that.
Right after transmigrating, every night had been a succession of delightful parties and balls. Who would have thought that would come back to bite him?
At a ball he’d attended like any other, the man had ended up catching the eye of the Grand Duke of the North, who was said to be making an appearance for the first time in ages. When a man handsome enough to captivate even another man approached him with obvious goodwill, he’d gotten a little carried away.
They had only exchanged a few compliments and words tinged with admiration, so how had things ended up like this?
After drinking the wine offered by the Grand Duke of the North, whom he’d thought he’d become fairly close with, the man lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes, he was inside a carriage headed for the northern territory.
‘I couldn’t possibly leave a scratch on your fair skin. Nothing heavier than silk stockings could ever have hung from these ankles, so I’ll fasten them with straps of softly tanned leather.’
The look in the Grand Duke’s eyes as he said that and caressed the man’s ankle had changed completely.
‘I went through all the trouble of transmigrating. There’s no way I’m letting some heartless bastard fuck me in the ass!’
And so he’d desperately cut through the cord tied around his ankle and made his escape.
“…I can’t believe the novel I read was about men getting involved with each other. And I’m the one who gets fucked?”
‘You’re the only one who has ever treated me with such sincerity.’
Even when he’d seen the Grand Duke’s nape turn red as he said that, he’d simply thought the man was hot…
To think that wasn’t it.
A long sigh spilled from the man as he lay flat on the ground with both hands clutching his head.
“I should’ve been a little less nice… No, if this was going to happen, I should’ve just never transmigrated at all.”
Not that transmigrating had been something he’d wanted to do in the first place.
If he could, he wanted nothing more than to return to the world where he’d lived, where there was no chance of being imprisoned or of lying with his nose buried in mud like this.
Where he’d originally been… Originally?
“Wait, where did I live, and what did I used to do?”
The man voiced the question in his head. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t remember his original name, where he’d lived, or even how he’d ended up inside this book.
All he remembered was that this world was the world of the original novel and that he had transmigrated into it.
Rustle.
Just then, the sound of someone stepping on grass came from near the thicket where the man was hiding.
So lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed someone approaching, the man flinched and froze.
‘Fuck, is it those knights from before? They’re already back?’
The thought of being dragged back to the Grand Duke and having a chain fastened around his ankle filled him with despair, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Lee Jinwoo-ssi.”
A low, calm voice called to him from behind.
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